In a statement, Chris Askew, chief executive of Diabetes United Kingdom, says: “It is deeply worrying that so many women with diabetes do not have their condition under control during the early stages of pregnancy, as this is putting the health of the baby at risk”.
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Animal studies suggest that sildenafil also can improve insulin sensitivity, the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream by muscle.
Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in the USA used the erectile dysfunction drug to prevent the function of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5).
The national audit revealed 74 per cent of diabetic pregnant women have high blood glucose levels – and the audit’s lead doctor is calling for services to work together to increase awareness among women at risk from stillbirths, neonatal deaths and congenital abnormalities at birth.
The study also found that 8 percent of the women with Type 2 diabetes and close to 12 percent of those with Type 1 diabetes had glucose levels in their blood that were higher than levels advised for those planning to get pregnant. The National Pregnancy in Diabetes audit found that a high proportion of pregnancies (46.7%) occur in women who have type 2 diabetes.
The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, involved overweight people with pre-diabetes being treated with either Viagra or a matching placebo for three months.
With rising obesity levels, it can sometimes be hard for doctors to distinguish type 1 diabetes, which requires insulin injections, and type 2 diabetes, which can be controlled through diet and weight loss in young adults.
Fact: A common myth which is generally associated with this lifestyle disease is that consuming too much sugar causes diabetes.
“Because existing drug therapies to prevent type 2 diabetes can have negative effects on the heart or be of limited use in patients with kidney disease, strategies to prevent diabetes without adversely affecting the risk of kidney and heart disease could have a large impact on public health”, she said in the news release.
Sildenafil and related drugs prevent PDE5 from breaking down a chemical in the body called cyclic GMP, which relaxes blood vessels and increases insulin sensitivity, the researchers said.
Claudia Ramirez, M.D., research fellow in Clinical Pharmacology, was the study’s first author. Other co-authors were James Luther, M.D., MSCI, Jorge Gamboa, M.D., Ph.D., Chang Yu, Ph.D., and Hui Nian.
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Bao analyzed data from 4,502 women with a history of gestational diabetes participating in the ongoing Nurses’ Health Study II cohort, as part of the Diabetes and Women’s Health study.
